Girl Talk Dishes on New LP

"Features" Nicki Minaj, Aphex Twin, Fugazi, Rick Ross, and more.

After hundreds of increasingly insane (and inflatable dolphin-filled) shows over the past four years, pop collage mastermind Girl Talk aka Gregg Gillis took a break this summer to work on his follow-up to 2008's ecstatic Feed the Animals. Five months and many 12-hour days of production later, he's just about ready to drop his latest sample-based opus. In a recent interview, Gillis told us he wants to release the as-yet-untitled album-- his longest and most complex yet-- by the end of the year.

Read on to find out a ton more about the new material-- which features elements of tunes by Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Supergrass, Fugazi, Modern English, Black Sabbath, and a special crash up of Soulja Boy and Aphex Twin-- and if he still worries about getting sued:

Pitchfork: When I heard your last album, Feed the Animals, I thought it sounded like the ultimate Girl Talk party record. Which was great. But, at the same time, what do you do next?

Gregg Gillis: I've been getting that question since Night Ripper: "What do you do after this?" But when you're in an indie rock band with guitars, bass, and drums, people aren't questioning whether you're going to use those same instruments on your next album;
no one's asking Big Boi if his new album's going to have drum machine sounds on it.

At the same time, immediately after Feed the Animals came out, I thought it would be the last extended collage record that I'd make. But then I spent a lot of time preparing material for the live show and it got to the point where I had a lot of new stuff in front of me that was definitely in a similar style to Feed the Animals and Night Ripper. But I came up with an idea of where this album could go that Feed the Animals didn't.

To me, amping things up doesn't mean cramming in more samples as much as it means making things more dynamic and expressing more patience and being more detailed than before. I wanted to put in more little breather-room elements. It's definitely in the same ballpark as Feed the Animals, but the production's more complex and there's more of a variety in the source material. I'm trying to make something that's really, really complicated and has material that jumps around as far as possible in genre and style but, when you ultimately listen to it, it sounds like one cohesive piece of music. Also, this album is going to be the longest one I've done yet, like 65-plus minutes.

Pitchfork: Do you approach making an album and preparing a live show differently?

GG: Yeah, in the two years of preparing material for shows, I realized there are elements that are definitely going to work live, but might not be the most exciting thing to put on a record. And there's stuff that I really love but it falls flat live. Like, if you're going to drop a Supergrass sample versus a Van Halen sample, the Van Halen piece is going to win out at every show regardless of which works better musically or what's more interesting. That's just the way it is. I'm 100% behind all of the material, but I'm conscious of the fact that there's 2,000 people out there wanting to have a good time at a show. I'm not really trying to document a party on the album, though. It's something else.

So doing the record gives me a chance with all those ideas I came up with but maybe didn't have a place live. There are bits of Supergrass and Fugazi on the record, and hopefully kids who are 18 who aren't familiar with them might become a fan of that particular sample or song. The last thing I was fooling around with was a piece of Fine Young Cannibals' "Good Thing"-- that's one I wouldn't expect to really fly super well during a live performance, but the way it worked out on this album was perfect. On the record, it doesn't come down to what's going to get the party started the most. It's about what's most musically interesting and lasting. I just want to make a classic album.

Pitchfork: What do you think is the ideal way to listen to your albums?

GG: I get excited because people use it as cookout music, or listen to it before they go out. That makes sense to me. I definitely hope it can be headphone music too because a lot of my favorite electronic records are ones that you can sit down with and really piece apart. But it's almost a little bit weird to me that people would just throw it on at a college party and want to dance to Fugazi remixes in 2010. I think it's very cool; I just never really intended for that to happen.

Pitchfork: While listening to Rick Ross's hit "B.M.F." on the radio this summer I couldn't help but think: "This is something that could end up on a Girl Talk album."

GG: Yeah, that's on the new record. I'm really pumped on that song. I just sampled the beat and actually didn't use any of the vocals. I'm always excited when I can mix up the format as much as possible so it's not always just men rapping throughout the whole album.

Pitchfork: Speaking of, I thought Nicki Minaj would be a go-to for you as well.

GG: Yeah, she's on there too. That was a difficult pick because I tried not to overload any one artist's presence and she has so many awesome verses from the past couple years. Picking one or two was a bit stressful for me. I ended up using her verse on that Usher song "Little Freak" and mixing it up with a little classic rock. The album jumps around a lot but it's super calculated; you won't hear two 90s alternative rock songs back-to-back or two Nicki Minaj verses back-to-back.

Pitchfork: Is there one "eureka" moment on the record that you're particularly proud of right now?

GG: Maybe my favorite moment is this mix I did with Soulja Boy's "Pretty Boy Swag" and Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker". I've always followed Soulja Boy and love that song, but I also feel like that's a hip-hop song a lot of people might make fun of. So if you don't really come correct, you shouldn't do it at all. But the mix with Aphex Twin sounded perfect to my ears-- regardless of how you feel about that Soulja Boy song, you might have a different perspective on it with the new mix.

Pitchfork: "Pretty Boy Swag" is definitely one of my favorite rap songs of the year.

GG: That's good to hear because I don't hear that much. I always meet people at shows and we'll start talking about rap and oftentimes they seem really disappointed to hear how big of a Soulja Boy fan I am. I've been a fan for years now; I think he could go on to have a long-lasting career and grow to be respected on a lyrical level if he chose to. He's masterful at making weird pop songs that are addicting.

Pitchfork: As far as copyright issues go, do you think that's less of an issue now compared to when Night Ripper came out?

GG: The issue still stands, I think. But, when Night Ripper came out, the idea of an unsolicited remix was foreign to a lot of people. Like, "This guy just chose to remix these pop songs and no one asked him to?" Whereas now 10-year-old kids in grade school are probably remixing their Justin Bieber CDs and uploading them to YouTube. And people are so used to these fan videos and response videos. So much media content now is based upon previously existing media. Something like Night Ripper probably isn't radical to kids in high school now.

Pitchfork: Are you more or less worried about being sued now?

GG: [laughs] I feel confident in what I'm doing and I do believe it should be legal. But, simultaneously, it's hard to say you have no concern when The New York Times calls you a lawsuit waiting to happen. You might have this clock ticking in your head, thinking, "When's this going to end?"